Cube Results Compiled

Mike RosenbergFriday, March 28, 2014

he results from today's three rounds of Cube Draft have come in, and despite a solid effort from Hannes Kerem to earn the White Weenie archetype that he drafted an undefeated record, it was Rune Andersen's green-oriented ramp strategy that came out on top in his pod, with a lot of blue accompanying the green for card-drawing monsters like Consecrated Sphinx. Joining him is Tamas Glied, who also drafted a green ramp deck that delves into red for Chandra, Pyromaster and some removal.

The preference for many players today was to focus on cheap, efficient strategies like Mono-Red, but despite the hate on big and expensive spells it was two ramp decks that were casting those expensive spells to emerge victorious. Mono-Red, perhaps the most talked about archetype in player interviews today, only managed a 3-3 between the two players that played the archetype in their respective pods.

With the hype surrounding Mono-Red, what happened? In this case, the known quantity proved to be dangerous, as players were well aware of Mono-Red's effectiveness in this draft. When the other players realized the deck was unavailable in their seat, they gave up on drafting the aggressive archetype in favor of the cards that were open.

This is what happened for Seth Manfield (who was only able to cobble together a 1-2 victory with his three-color archetype), and Tamas Glied (who first picked Terastodon and never looked back, immediately giving up on the red archetype when the ramp spells kept on coming).

The featured drafter from the start of today's video coverage, Bing Luke, had a particularly rough start after today's Cube Drafts, and he will have his work cut out for him to make up for his 0-3 alongside Bruno Diaz, whose unfortunate matches with his Reanimator deck also stranding him in the 0-3 bracket.

In the end, the power of Mono-Red was on everyone's radar, and the powerful creatures and spells that you can cast in ramp strategies proved to be insurmountable.